The first thing I do with any system is dump any product that has 'Norton' on it. Give me a 'free' anti virus any day over Symantec malware. Manufacturers please please please! take note... stop 'preinstalling' symantec crapware on your systems!

back a few years ago I used to 'pirate' movies. Usually crappy cam jobs with someone who couldn't hold the camera still and people walking in front of the camera. Every week I would go to the theater and watch the movies that I enjoyed. I stopped after getting a 'warning' and my interest in movies has completely dropped off. I can't even remember the last movie that I went to see. If anything pirating these films increased the sales of the movie theaters/companies. I must admit pirating also helped me avoid some major lemons though (battlefield earth!). I also have a pretty decent DVD collection but haven't kept up in the last couple years as well.

As for the 'pirate party'... I'm sure I will see their name right beside the rhino party on the ballot...

With all the work that Mr Carmack has done under linux, I was surprised when I loaded Ubuntu on my new laptop that Quakelive wasn't supported... its kinda sad actually

I wonder if this means they wont GPL any further game engines... This news was kinda sad, one of the top tier developers sells out... a sad time for pc gamers... but I guess it could have been worse, EA could have bought them.

Because a kindle is only a black and white text reader???

A cheap netbook is even smaller and still does 100x what the kindle does for far less. I can't believe the price of a gadget that is basically a black and white text reader. $50 max is what it is really worth

I have XP on my desktop and Vista on my laptop... Desktop is 2yrs old (amd64/2gb ram) and the laptop is a brand new toshiba (amdx2 64/ 3gb ram). I did a simple benchmark test running Fritz 10 benchmark (chess software that I use for position analysis). XP benchmark was 7.9 (compared to 1.0 on a p4 1ghz)... Vista was 3.4???!!!??? note that this benchmark doesn't include video etc... it benchmarks how fast the analysis runs. This shows that XP is over TWICE as fast on 2yr old slower hardware than a brand new Vista machine. After spending a whole day doing tweaks to get Vista to feel somewhat responsive, I was able to get my Fritz 10 benchmark to 3.9... Still pathetic. I certainly hope Win7 is far faster because Vista is a performance DOG for anyone running performance critical applications. This is the #1 reason why I tell people to stick with XP as long as possible.... Those who have to upgrade I recommend two different paths... if they are tech dummies, I suggest buying a Mac (something I have NEVER done before) or if they have a clue, I recommend using Linux. Ubuntu on the Vista laptop flies, yet Vista is just barely usable.

I run a Chess Training program called 'Encyclopedia of Opening Blunders' by Convekta software. Its a pretty simple program of opening tactical problems. This program will NOT run under Vista no matter what I do... other Convekta training programs (ct-art) work fine after downloading convektas work around, but this one crashes every time.

Like alot of people here, Starcraft was perhaps the best game to play at LAN parties. Sure Blizzard said they are going to improve battle.net servers, but can they improve my connection? LAN support is an absolute MUST have for games like this and removing it is a deal breaker for me. I bought SC1 and Broodwar, but there is no way I would buy a game that takes such a key feature out. There are alot of games out there for my limited gaming dollar... Blizzard just reduced that list by one.

"At the risk of sounding like a troll, it comes down to: fanboy cults develop around the underdog, not around the big 800 pound gorilla who is winning anyway."

lol there are plenty of rabid yankee fans, so your theory doesn't hold water :)